poems, stories, scribbles

Tag: health

My father came home
With a stack of X-ray films.
He went into his office and put them
Up, one-by-one,
In front of the light.
I sat behind,
Unnecessary,
And watched as the light formed
Bones and stomachs and necks.
Puzzle pieces glowing.
He called me over,
Look at this
Kid
He swallowed a coin.
See?
And there I saw a shekel –
Small circular shadow in the light.
But you wouldn’t know the currency
From the image.
I gaped as I imagined,
Which of my classmates was this?
My world was confined to my kindergarten.
If anything happened,
It must have been there.
A war, a holiday, a storm,
Confined to my nap-room.

Last week my father sat in his office,
In front of the computer screen
Glowing with bones and stomachs and necks.
He called me down to see,
Look at this
Woman
She swallowed a butter knife.
See?
And there I saw, with clear-cut precision,
The long shadow in the light.
But you wouldn’t know her reasons
From the image.
I gaped as I imagined
What that must have felt like.
What thoughts led her to this,
What fears.
A war, a holiday, a storm,
Confined to her mind.

I am by a big window
Staring at the sky.
I see light but no sun,
I feel light but no warmth.
I hear a hum.
I feel the rough carpet beneath me
Threatening to burn my skin if I move too fast.
I stay still,
Looking out
Looking for
A sun. Any will do.
The universe is vast and uncaring.
I could be elsewhere,
I could be here.
I am forever somewhere,
Or nowhere at all.

I have filled myself with others’ stories.
Stories to avoid my own.
Stories to carry,
to ponder,
to listen to on repeat in my own head late at night,
when I am forgetting to be writing my own.

Stories of pain
and difficulty and happiness and
memories, felt or lost or forgotten
until they are told out loud.

I have been overflowing with other selves
I absorbed, mistakenly
trying to fit them into my own concave interior,
a container to be filled and shipped
somewhere far. I yearn to lock
and steal these stories inside of me,
take them to a new place where I might bury them,
and as I dig their grave, in the soil I find
myself, waiting to be lifted out and taken home.